Spoonful of Sugar Free

Registered Dietitian

Healthy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

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If I offered you a giant spoon of chocolate frosting, would you eat it?

I don’t know about you, but I would devour that frosting and continue to lick the spoon clean. No wasted frosting for me.

What if I told you this frosting was healthy?

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you would probably believe me. If you are new here, however, you might think I’m a wee bit crazy.

I promise I’m not crazy (well, maybe I’m just a little crazy…). I’m just a girl who loves chocolate frosting. Fudgy brownies with frosting. Chocolate cupcakes with frosting. Banana cookies with frosting. Chocolate cake layered with frosting. Chocolate frosting on a waffle. Chocolate frosting on a spoon.

Oh, and I’d still like this all to be healthy.

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Healthy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Total Time: 10 minutes

Yield: 1 cup frosting

Healthy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

~This Chocolate Buttercream uses healthy, whole-food ingredients. Sugar-Free, Dairy-Free, Soy-Free, Nut-Free (when using sunflower butter), Gluten-Free, Paleo, and Vegan.

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup mashed sweet potato*
  • 1/4-1/2 cup pitted dates
  • 1/4 cup cocoa powder
  • 3 Tablespoons coconut oil
  • 2 Tablespoons nutbutter of choice (I used sunflower seed butter. Tahini or almond will also work well)
  • 1/2 cup dairy-free milk (coconut or almond work well)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the coconut oil. Whisk in the cocoa powder to create a chocolate syrup.
  2. In a blender or food processor, blend together the dates and milk to create a sweet milk. Blend until smooth. More dates will create a sweeter frosting, less dates will create a darker frosting.
  3. Add the sweet potato, nut butter, and vanilla to the blender and blend until smooth.
  4. Stir in chocolate-coconut syrup mix until well-incorporated and smooth.
  5. Use right away or keep in fridge until later use. The frosting will become more firm while in fridge.

Notes

*I used baked sweet potatoes and take the skin off before mashing.

https://www.spoonfulofsugarfree.com/2012/07/06/healthy-chocolate-buttercream-frosting/

The great thing about this frosting is that it holds its shape. I wanted to make a frosting used the Coconut Whipped Cream trick, but that melts easily when out of the fridge. So go ahead and pipe this onto cupcakes or use to decorate your favorite cake with squiggles, flowers, or poco dots.

Not only does this recipe contain no added dairy, sugar, or soy (no tofu frosting for me, please), but it is chock full of antioxidants and vitamin A from sweet potato! The sweet potato gives it a creamy texture and body, while the dates help sweeten it a bit more. If you are on a diet that limits intake of fruit-sugars (like anti-candida diets), then try substituting the pureed dates for alcohol-free liquid stevia.

Health Benefits:

  • Sweet Potatoes: Full of fiber to keep you full. One of the best sources of Beta-Carotene. This pre-vitamin to vitamin A prevent night blindness and other eye problems, skin disorders, enhance immunity, protects against toxins and cancer formations, colds, flu, and infections. It is an antioxidant and protector of the cells while slowing the aging process.
  • Coconut: Coconut is widely misunderstood because of it’s high fat content; however, coconut’s saturated fat is made up of medium-chain fatty acids. These medium-chains are easy to absorb and digest, and are converted quickly into energy. This means that the body is less likely to store the medium-chain as fat. Coconut is also a great source of dietary fiber with a whopping 5 grams per oz!
  • Chocolate: Click Here for a post I wrote about the benefits of chocolate.

Thought-provoking, mind-prodding question of the day: 

Would you eat a giant scoop of frosting? Or are you more of a cake person?

P.S. Even if you didn’t win the giveaway for the Sugar Free Challenge, CORE Foods wants to give you a chance to try CORE Meals too! SAVE 20% on a single sample pack of CORE Meals at www.corefoods.com.  Use Coupon Code “sugarfree” after check out.  This discount expires 7/18/2012!

 

Reader Interactions

Comments

    • Thanks, Katie! That means a lot coming from a great photographer like you!!

  3. Oh my gosh. What an incredible recipe, Alex!!!! 😀 I am totally a frosting kind of gal. I would take the spoon of frosting over cake ANY day. It’s so much faster than waiting for a cake to bake anyways. 😉

    • Jennifer,

      It will hold up without refrigeration for a couple hours. I would keep it stored in the refrigerator when you are storing it, though, because it is a perishable item.

  6. Alex, I really want to make the chocolate frosting but can’t find the recipe on your web site. Where do I click?

    • Ben,

      It should be on my website under the picture of the jar with frosting. If you still do not see it, let me know and I can email it to you.

  9. Do you think it would work with pumpkin instead of sweet potato? I just bought one, and have no sweet potato.

    • Stacey,

      I have yet to try it with anything other than sweet potato, so I cannot vouch for pumpkin. I think it might work, though. Let me know if you try it!

  13. You are a genius. I need to try this next time something needs to be frosted.

  14. Alex, the only things I find under the bowl are the various things to put the frosting on and some comments about whipped coconut cream. There is one other thing
    [amd-zirecipe-recipe:44] but I don’t know how to access that.
    Ben

    • Ben,

      You are probably looking at the “newsletter email.” For some reason the recipe plugin always looks like that on the email. Go to m actual website to see the recipe, and let me know!

  16. I made this frosting this weekend. Yum! Especially with sliced bananas and cherries. Thanks for such a great recipe 🙂

  17. Looks amazing.I am completely in love ith nutella (full of refined sugar and skim milk. Maybe this can take its place.

  20. I made this & eventually it was great but I had to do some major tweaking. First, to fit our family’s dietary restrictions I subbed palm shortening for the coconut oil & I just used water rather than non-dairy milk. I doubled the recipe & other than that followed the recipe. It was nowhere even close to the color in your picture & didn’t even taste chocolatey at all. I had to about triple the recommended amount of cocoa powder (used a combo of Penzey’s cocoa & Navitas raw cocoa) to get it dark & chocolatey tasting. And then I had to add more sweetener as well. I ended up just using some agave because I was afraid more dates wouldn’t get fine enough if I added them that late in the process. It all worked out & was delicious in the end but the recipe didn’t work as is for me. Maybe you used less than 2/3 cup sweet potato to start with? Or you use more cocoa? Or a darker cocoa? I’m sure the non-dairy milk would have added more sweetness but it wouldn’t have made it more chocolatey. Any idea what went wrong?

    • Laura,

      hmmm…well it sounds like you subbed a lot of my ingredients, so I can’t really vouch for your results. You could also try melting some unsweetened chocolate bars into the mix to make it even more chocolate-y.

      • No offense, this is a fantastic concept, but I only subbed out 2 ingredients initially. Palm shortening for coconut oil shouldn’t make any difference. I do that all the time. Water instead of a non-dairy milk I would think should have made it more chocolatey, not less. I just wanted to let other readers know they may need to use more cocoa to get a chocolatey tasting frosting which means they’ll also probably want to use the max amount of dates. For what it’s worth it also tasted fantastic before I put the cocoa in at all. I think I may have even liked it better that way. I did think about melting some chocolate into it (fantastic idea) but I only had regular old chocolate chips & didn’t want to add the cane sugar.

        Most of the commenters before me didn’t seem to have actually tried the recipe yet. I know I always appreciate reading how others tweaked a recipe & what worked or didn’t work.

        • If I may comment, although you may not see. I did the recipe and only changed sweet potato and it was perfect. So smooth and very chocolatey. I tried making some sugar free chocolate this past Christmas though, added some liquid (juice) to the chocolate and the texture was all weird. I did some research and found out water doesn’t do well with melted chocolate, maybe that was part of your problem? Just an idea.

    • Jo,

      I really don’t know if that would work because a white potato is extremely starchy and has a different flavor than a sweet potato. You can always try it, though, and see how it turned out.

  23. Hats off to you on this recipe which is not just “not bad for you” but actually GOOD for you! I just added a pinch of salt. Now to see if it passes the kid test . . .

  24. This was sooo good. I have had my family on a sugar/gluten/dairy free diet now for 3 years, made a birthday cake tonight with this frosting, they devoured it, even my sugar eating extended family loved it! 🙂

  25. I made this and it was so delicious! Props to a fantastic recipe. I would have never thought to use sweet potatoes (I actually subbed in kabocha squash, since it’s less starchy, and it was still fantastic). I think this would also taste delicious with some added coconut flakes.

    Do you also have a recipe for the chocolate cake that is in the pictures? It looks equally divine!

  26. I altered this quite a bit – mostly because my blender had a hard time with it! – but still had fantastic results. I served it on a chocolate cake (made of black beans) to my family (who were none-the-wiser as to the ingredients). It held up beautifully and was super chocolatey and delicious. (I used 170g baked sweet potato, some liquid stevia instead of dates (I thought this would screw it all up!), 3 Tbsp of unsweetened applesauce instead of coconut oil and nut butter (we have coconut, nut, and dairy allergies (i.e., no regular butter as a substitute either) in my family), and a little bit more almond milk (to help my blender along). Still turned out awesome! Thank you for this fabulous idea. 🙂

  27. can you use kumara instead? I dont think we have sweet potato in New Zealand but I think kumara is similar? And is peanut butter ok too use or too dry?

    • Rachelle,

      Using peanut butter will result in a peanut butter-chocolate flavored frosting, which is fine. I think a kumara would be fine.

  28. I’m so happy I’m not the only person obsessed with using veggies in unusual places!! Sweet potato and chocolate go so well together; so well that no one ever guesses they’re eating healthy!! Thanks for making me feel normal!

  29. Awesome, thanks for this! I’ve been looking for a frosting that won’t melt. And I have a sweet potato sitting around waiting for something to do…. Can hardly wait to try it 😀

  30. so i did the cake and frosting — the cake came out perfect, looked just like your picture, and for me a guy way too unfamiliar with the kitchen, thats an amazing accomplishment. The chocolate frosting – I screwed that up somehow, I used 100% natural peanut butter (hence that overtook the chocolate in terms of taste), and it came out more like a mousse vs. a creamy frosting — think I used too much sweet potato, how can I make it creamier the next time? also for the cake recipe, can I replace the eggs with applesauce so its vegan? thanks a bunch.

    • Hi Larry,

      So glad you enjoyed the cake! I haven’t tried replacing the eggs in any of my cake recipes, but let me know if you try it! The peanut butter will definitely have a more pronounced taste than using almond or sunflower seed butter. Did you try refrigerating the frosting overnight? This definitely helps to thicken it up-especially with the coconut oil.

  31. I just tried this recipe and it was awesome… I am not trying to be sugar free, i love cakes and frosting but i am also trying to lose weight n incorporate healthier food in my diet. I made your chocolate cake, it was great, satisfied my cravings for chocolate cake very much…i had some sweet potato and tried this recipe just for fun, i never trusted that frosting would taste good without butter and high amounts of sugar…. But it did, in fact it tasted better! This will be my go to recipe from now on! Also probably my dates were not sweet enough, so i added a tbsp of icing sugar, coz i wadnt really sugar free also i am just glad that i found a recipe for frosting that didnt need pounds of sugar!! You are a genius…. Now i need to try you vanilla cake, coz i never trust a recipe for a vanilla cake witjout good amounts of butter and sugar 😉